Dread

dread, also called Anxiety or Angst,
a fundamental category of existentialism. According to the 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, dread, or angst, is a desire for what one fears and is central to his conception of original sin. For the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, anxiety is one of the distinctive ways through which Dasein (the historical person) is disclosed as a contingent being, and thus anxiety is that through which fear first becomes possible.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.